Again he smiled: it was a soft, sleepy, soothing kind of smile, that was almost an opiate.
"You are not good at metaphysics?" he said, coming still nearer and passing his short thick hands over her head carressingly.
"I am not good at anything," she answered dreamily.
"Yes, at many things—to answer me for one—but bad at dialectics."
"I do not understand your hard words," said Leam, her sense of injury at being addressed in an unknown tongue rousing her from the torpor creeping over her.
How much she wished that he would release her! She had no power to leave him of her own free-will. A certain compelling something in Mr. Gryce always forced her to do just as he wished—to answer his questions, stay when he stopped, follow when he beckoned. She resented in feeling, but she obeyed in fact; and he valued her obedience more than he regretted her resentment.
"How far would you go to prove your gratitude?" he continued.
"I do not know," said Leam, the weary sigh repeated.
"Would you marry for gratitude where you did not love?"
"No," she answered in a low voice.